The End of Deutsches Haus?

As Deutsches Haus gears up for Oktoberfest, the cultural club faces big changes on the horizon.

There's a big digital clock mounted over the bar inside Deutsches
Haus, keeping a precise and rapidly diminishing countdown until the
start of Oktoberfest 2009 this weekend. The anticipation, excitement
and even the pressure to finish preparations are always so great during
these last few days before the annual celebration, some Deutsches Haus
members really do seem to track the passing minutes.

But this year, something is different: That countdown
clock is ticking away time to the last Oktoberfest at the historic
building the club has called home since 1928. Deutsches Haus leaders
are convinced that before next autumn, their sturdy brick clubhouse on
South Galvez Street will be demolished, along with hundreds of other
buildings in the 37-acre section of lower Mid-City slated for the new
Louisiana State University (LSU) hospital.

Since plans for a new state hospital in the neighborhood
emerged after Hurricane Katrina, club members have feared each
Oktoberfest could be the last. But after a meeting earlier this month
with state attorneys and land acquisition specialists, Deutsches Haus
leaders say the fate of their club's longtime home is sealed.

"It is official, this will be the last Oktoberfest at
that site," says Deutsches Haus president Keith Oldendorf. "We don't
have a move-out date yet, but that's about it."

In interviews, Deutsches Haus members express heartache
and incredulity that they will soon lose their clubhouse. For some of
them, the Haus — as the actual building and the organization
itself are interchangeably called — has been the center of their
social lives for decades. Many members devoted countless volunteer
hours rebuilding the Haus after the Hurricane Katrina levee failures,
racing that countdown clock to reopen the club in time for Oktoberfest
2006.

"It's very hard to accept," says club member Ursula
Jackson, a native of Cologne, Germany, who moved to New Orleans in
1964. "When I think about it, I feel like crying. After Katrina, the
way people came back to this place and did so much together to bring it
back, it's never looked better, you can see that. So, yes, it's very
hard now to think about what's going to happen. It hurts very
much."

But there is also a current of quiet pragmatism and
magnanimity as club members explain their feelings about the future.
While a "Save the Haus" campaign emerged, with lawn signs and bumper
stickers, Deutsches Haus leaders say they recognize the hospital's
potential impact on the city's health care picture and economy and
don't want their club holding up such progress. Their approach has not
been to protest hospital plans, but rather to raise awareness about
their club and try to find some way to keep it alive once it's
displaced.

"I'm 48. I know I'm going to need a hospital in this
town some day, and we don't do surgery at the Haus," says Joe Stephany,
the club's second vice president. "If I put the straight
black-and-white to it, the city needs this hospital. So we haven't been
against it. Our position has always been the hospital and the Haus
together."

Oldendorf says the club's goal is to find a location to
open a new incarnation of Deutsches Haus. He says the club wants to
stay in Mid-City to honor historic ties to the area and will try to
salvage as much building material as possible from the original Haus to
use at a new address.

"Our other goal is to be ready for Oktoberfest next year
wherever we are," he says. "That won't be easy, but we did it once
after Katrina and we can do it again."

Deutsches Haus traces a long and deep history in New Orleans, dating
back to 1848 when its predecessor, Deutsche Gesellschaft von New
Orleans (or German Society of New Orleans) was formed to help German
immigrants who were then pouring into the city. At that time Germans
made up the largest group of foreign-speaking people in the state,
according to local researcher Ellen C. Merrill's 2004 book Germans
of Louisiana. They were so prevalent in the city that part of the
9th Ward was known as "Little Saxony." The West Bank railroad town
called Mechanikham, later absorbed into Gretna, was another hub, as was
lower Mid-City.

Strong German identity became a liability when America
entered World War I, however, and expressions of German culture around
New Orleans were submerged. In 1918, the Louisiana Legislature even
passed a law making it illegal to speak German in public or teach
German in schools. But 10 years after the war, Deutsche Gesellschaft
and several other German groups merged to form Deutsches Haus and help
reaffirm their heritage.

In recent years, the club's Oktoberfest has grown into
its largest annual event and its most important source of funds and new
members. A record crowd of approximately 19,000 people attended last
year's celebration, held over the course of five weekends. It's an
all-ages event that for many locals has become a rite of autumn,
complete with traditional Bavarian food prepared by club members, lots
of imported German beer and oompah bands performing countless
renditions of the "Chicken Dance" song, which always fills the beer
garden with dancing families.

Bonds formed in the effort to rebuild Deutsches Haus
after Katrina, and the successful Oktoberfests that followed helped
swell club membership to at least 600 people, more than twice the
pre-Katrina rolls of 275 members. The men and women come from all over
the metro area, representing a diverse range of ages, professions and
even ethnicities. Many can trace full German family heritage, while
others are simply drawn to the culture of the club, its events and
camaraderie, or what Germans call gemütlichkeit. Those
close ties will be key as the club tries to relocate.

"What we've built here is a cultural center and that
will be continued somewhere else to pick up where we left off," says
Deutsches Haus treasurer Al Bourg. "It's going to be hard, but we have
a lot of momentum from these past years and we feel we can bring that
with us. It's the German heritage organization that's important, the
culture and the contribution that culture made to New Orleans. That's
what we stand for and what matters."

The LSU hospital is slated to open in 2013, but the project has been
controversial from the start and faces significant obstacles. Plans
call for a $1.2-billion facility with 424 beds to be built adjacent to
a new 200-bed hospital the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs plans to
build in a separate project. Together the two health institutions would
form a 70-acre medical complex in lower Mid-City. The LSU hospital in
particular is intended to replace Charity Hospital and, like Charity
before it, would serve as south Louisiana's main teaching hospital,
where medical students and others from LSU, Tulane and other area
universities would receive training.

Hammering out a hospital governance plan to share
control among the different players took a year of often-contentious
negotiation. A deal finally was reached last month. Still looming is
the question of funding. The state has set aside $300 million to build
the hospital and hopes FEMA will hand over another $492 million as the
replacement cost for Charity Hospital. So far, though, the federal
agency has offered only $150 million to cover Charity's storm damages.
The state is expected to decide by Oct. 30 whether to enter arbitration
to reach a final compensation sum or go to court to settle the matter.
Even if everything goes the state's way, it would still need to borrow
$400 million to cover the LSU hospital's full price tag.

In addition, LSU faces several lawsuits from lower
Mid-City residents, preservationists and others seeking to block the
development. They argue the community would be better served by
renovating Charity Hospital instead of razing a national historic
district neighborhood to build a new facility from the ground up.

One area where LSU has not encountered much trouble,
though, is Deutsches Haus. Don't think the university hasn't
noticed.

"From the very first week the site was announced, the
people at Deutsches Haus have bent over backwards to demonstrate
support for the new hospital," says LSU spokesman Charles Zewe.
"They've been a pleasure to work with, and LSU is very supportive of
seeing Deutsches Haus survive somewhere nearby."

Zewe says LSU initially considered a plan to operate
Deutsches Haus within the hospital, which would essentially give the
facility an in-house beer garden, but engineers and security planners
quickly nixed the idea. Deutsches Haus members say they doubt the club
could survive where it is today as the hospital takes shape around it,
since years of major construction would severely limit public
access.

As part of the state's land acquisition procedure, the
Louisiana Office of Facilities Planning and Control will decide
reimbursement for the club's property. No such details have been
determined, but Zewe says LSU will be rooting for Deutsches Haus
through the process.

"We have a lot of doctors and nurses and staff who go to
Oktoberfest and enjoy that place very much," Zewe says. "We want
[Deutsches Haus] to succeed and want to help them relocate."

In the meantime, Deutsches Haus members are planning this year's
celebration as a blowout, a grand last hurrah at the old South Galvez
Street property. Attendance is expected to exceed last year's
record-breaking total, and the club has expanded the festival with
Saturday afternoon hours for the first time. It also has added a new
VIP ticket package utilizing the building's newly refurbished (and soon
to be demolished) upstairs ballroom. Club members talk excitedly about
new beers joining the dozens of German brews on tap for this year's
festivities, and about a new bratwurst burger on the festival menu. But
everyone also acknowledges that the fate of the Haus will be the
undercurrent of this year's party.

"I can guarantee you this, when the last Saturday of
Oktoberfest rolls around and it's just us, the members of the Haus here
having our last beer in the bar, there won't be a dry eye in the
building," Stephany says. "It was like that for the Oktoberfest after
Katrina, and I daresay it will be just like that again this year
knowing what's coming for this place."